Starting Summer
by Kerney
Summary: Jake Davies is married to a witch and once had a brother who was a wizard. What is it like for him to interact in with the magical world. This was inspired JK Rowling's comment that Cho married a muggle and written for the Reviews Lounge Summer project.


Starting Summer

By

Kerney

"The film we're watching today," Jake said to his Muggle Studies class, "was co produced by the education division of the Muggle Worthy Explanation Department in 2008. Can anyone tell me who the other producers might be?"

"ITV,"

"Five points to Gryffindor, Miss Weasley."

"Toho Studios." A pimply boy in a Ravenclaw tie spoke up.

"Here in the U.K., Jenkins," Jake said good naturedly, he didn't give the points.

"Merchant-Ivory,"

"They're exclusively Muggle, Macmillan." The girl nodded.

"BBC."

"Brilliant, Mr. Corner." Jeffery smiled. "Five points, and another five points if anyone can name which division of the BBC does most of that type of work." He spoke slowly, empathizing the long vowels that marked his own speech. This was another subtle hint.

Jeffery enjoyed these question and answer sessions in his class and made sure he did them often. It also subtly favored his wife's house. There were a fair number of Hufflepuff, slightly more Gryffindor and a pair of Slytherins. But the largest numbers of students were in Ravenclaw blue. He would have done things like this even if it were not true. His wife was always a little a little happier when her students won the house cup. Even with her son in Hufflepuff that hadn't changed, though she concealed it until they were alone.

"Mr. Clearwater's hand was up first."

"BCC Wales."

"Five points to Ravenclaw. For twenty points, who can you tell me about the Swansea Library Incident."

Lucy Weasley got her hand up first and he pointed to her. "There were muggles—"

"People," Jake corrected. Miss Weasley was passionate about the subject and had set a goal of working of in Muggle fashion, which he encouraged. It reminded him of his own passion for the magical world, one that had been ignited the summer his brother Roger had gotten his letter.

"People were vanishing in the Old Swansea Library. The Scamanders investigated and discovered," the girl paused for a moment, thinking. "Shadows that melt the flesh?"

"Twenty points to Gryffindor." The red headed girl's face lit up. He lit up with her as he watched the look on her face. She was hungry for more. Professor Longbottom and Jake thought her most likely to marry a muggle; a fact that seemed to worry her pureblooded parents warmed his heart. With her in this class, pleasing his wife was harder. With an enthusiastic student, he didn't mind.

"O.K., and this film was written in a way that incorporates useful information on a magical creature that can be used to give people a fighting chance when they don't know what they're up against. It even includes the setting in which the creatures were discovered. Now, unlike the vampire or the Japanese flightless dragon warnings you read about in the texts they present a newly discovered creature, in a way that acts very much like a public service announcement. Except, presenting it as fiction lets it stay within the statute of secrecy.

"What good is that?" Jenkins spoke up again. He had an impulsive streak that made Jake's job easier.

"Jenkins, do you enjoy this class?"

"It's my favorite, sir."

"Then you know muggles have a general idea of how to deal with vampires that can be turned into a useful defense." Jake didn't mention the corollary to this. He'd used the same type of knowledge during the year of Death Eater rule to shelter his brother and his friend who had become his wife. _I was damn lucky too, and the Deatheaters had been ignorant. _Every once in awhile, the implications of what he was teaching gave him the shivers.

"You can watch this television show and be entertained. But there is also enough information here for any person," he stood in front of Jenkins and Miss Weasley to make the point that they were people too, "to survive an encounter provided they're lucky brave, and smart. Also, this is set in the future. Not all elements of the story are part of current muggle technology, which brings me to your O.W.L.s next week."

There were several groans, mostly involuntary. There were a couple people in the back who he knew had taken muggle studies due to it's lingering reputation as a soft option and three years into it they were still annoyed that it wasn't.

"There will be an essay question," the kids scribbled furiously in muggle notebooks wrote with ballpoint pens in his class, " about separating the fact from the fiction in this film." He paused for a moment so the slower students would have time to finish writing. "Once it gets started I'm going have to step out for a while so I think that should make you pay attention. I'll be back so I expect to see you all here when I get back."

"Miss Goyle," he called to a dark haired girl sitting next to the big screen projector and nodded to Mr. Clearwater, who pulled the cord of the Honda Generator sitting in one corner. "If you will." The room was especially insulated from the magical energies of the castle so things worked smoothly.

He watched through the prologue and when the familiar theme music came on and the class seemed properly enthralled, he quietly stepped out of classroom thirteen and into the hallway and walked down the hall to a formerly abandoned classroom which he and Neville had refitted for another purpose, back when Cho pregnant with Roger and Hannah Longottom had just given birth to their oldest daughter.

As of now, there were no Hogwarts faculty with small children, but the mirror they had installed on the far wall now served another purpose to Jake. If you stood in the hallway and the right angle, and looked through the window of the door, you could see most of the room. He had a few minutes before the appointment.

He waited, and watched. The trio inside, _the family,_ Jake mentally corrected himself. This part of his job was never fun, especially with these type of people. All three had startling beautiful looks and were dressed in the height of what Jake thought of as high wizarding style. The woman's long, straight blonde hair hung down in tight braids, accentuating her high, aristocratic cheekbones. Though in her thirties she seemed perfectly slim, coldly beautiful. The man had dark hair, curled perfectly. His size and broad shoulders were physically imposing. He looked tense, nervous, and was trying to hide it, not quite as well as his wife. He was glancing around, nervously, fidgeting, occasionally glancing at the little boy beside them, _their only son,_ with glances sometimes frustrated, sometimes sad. The boy as blonde as his mother, with the olive complexion of his father looked on anxiously.

Jake felt his wife before he saw her. Being small and light meant she could be quiet. She put her arms around his shoulders as she eased up beside them.

She took a moment and contemplated the couple in the room before she spoke.

"We played quiditch against him. He cheated. We still won." She had noticed what he was doing. She took longer looking at the woman. "She was horribly posh," Jake smiled at his wife's unselfconscious use of muggle slang. "Slytherin, named Daphne." After a moment of anticipation he turned and looked into her almond eyes, felt their hands clasp, sharing a quick, gentle kiss.

"Just talked to Neville. We're having the girls this weekend," She said gently.

"They'll take Meghan next weekend. The house will be ours," she whispered in her bedroom voice. He caught the scent of her perfume and could sense the smile on her lips. In this quiet, secluded hall the Head of Ravenclaw House and Charms Professor and the Muggles Studies Professor and Special Counselor Muggle and Squib affairs held each other like a couple of the teenagers they usually supervised.

"Mrs. Davies, I love how you think," he whispered in her ear. She blushed and laughed.

That was so like his Cho to erase the tension he was feeling. He felt young again, like the first year they were together, when she was in hiding and he was learning about the world he had only glimpsed through his brother's tales.

Together, their attention turned to the door. Inside were people who undoubtedly sympathized with those who had given the brother who'd once gotten a Hogwarts letter a dementor's kiss. An angry part of him was very much going to enjoy this meeting.

"Ready for this." He looked over to his wife. Her tone let him know, even without magic, she knew what she was thinking. Her look was warning him. She knew how he felt, even sympathized. Their son's name was Roger Cedric, after his brother and a boy who had been very special to her.

_It's for the boy, not for the parents. _He reminded himself and squeezed her hand. A glance let her know he had gotten her message. If his grades were good, he'd contact Thomas Finch-Fletchly at Eton. If not, he'd probably set up something up with his new contact at Smeltings. It was only the gym teacher and he seemed a bit intimidated by wizards. Still, he needed to cultivate more contacts and this seemed a promising start.

With that they opened the door and with that, being professional colleagues became more important then being husband and wife, at least for now.

_Only thirty more Muggleborns and three squibs to go, _Jake thought. With that and their daughter Meghan starting in the fall, he knew it was going to be an interesting summer.


End file.
